Social media marketer consultant & trainer working across B2B & B2C sectors including #restuarants #food #hotels #socialmedia #UK Bizwizuk born in #Manchester
LinkedIn Pages are often overlooked by employees so let’s explore how your employees can be more engaged and help support your marketing team. LinkedIn Pages are a platform where employees have an opportunity to share the latest news and achievements of your company and to show how much they are engaged. Pages is also a place to highlight what day to day life is like at your company, whether you’re recruiting or offering potential clients a sense of what it’s like to do business. This will not only show what dedicated employees your company has but it will also support your culture at the same time. Use your Page to establish yourselves as leaders in your industry and build brand awareness.
There’s
also LinkedIn
Elevate, which is a paid-for product that helps companies find content for
their employees to then share on the platform. Whatever your company’s aims, it’s important
that everyone in your company helps to support the awareness of your brand on
Pages by helping to share the news.
However,
if you do not have a company Page, LinkedIn’s ‘how to’ instructions are here.
Here’s how you can support your company’s LinkedIn Page efforts from just 10 minutes a week:
Actively engage and reply to Page
updates, by:
Following your company’s Page
Liking an update
Commenting on an update if you feel
appropriate (include your own point of view on an interesting update or
statistic)
Sharing and commenting on an update to
your connections (again, including your own point of view on an interesting update
or statistic)
Above all, ask yourself:
What will my connection take away from the content I am sharing? What will help them to click to read more?
Each month your marketing team will be looking at your LinkedIn Pages’ key metrics, and they’ll be looking for analytics such as:
Page followers
Post clicks
Engagement
Comments
Remember,
from just 10 minutes a week your employees can support your Page and that’s
great news for all involved!
I
have a complimentary factsheet with lots of tips and ideas to support your
LinkedIn marketing plan. If you’d like a
copy, please contact me.
Should you need any further assistance please don’t hesitate to
get in touch, whether that’s for a bespoke LinkedIn workshop or ongoing,
outsourced social media marketing support, to help ensure that your brand stays
on top in 2019.
Having a solid presence in Google is key to a business’ success, not least because it is the most used search engine in the world. In fact, as of December 2018, NetMarketShare reported that 73.62% of all searches were powered by Google.[1]
Considering this, how can businesses compete better in Google?
One way is to ensure that you have a detailed Google My Business listing set up which is a tool for businesses to create a presence for themselves in Google Maps. When you search for a local service in Google, paid adverts are displayed at the top, 3 Maps results (Google My Business listings), known as the ‘Snack Pack,’ follow, and Google’s organic search results appear last.
Important Information to Include in a Google My Business Listing
Business name
Business type
Address/areas served
Opening Hours
Phone Number
Business Description
Google Reviews
Google Posts
What are Google Posts
Google posts can be used to promote your services and offers in Google. They appear in your listing and last for 7 days, so it is important that you are making at least 1 post a week to make potential customers engage with your business. In the example below, we have posted an explainer video and a link for people to book a web-demonstration of our customer reviews platform, but you can post about anything you like!
Local SEO Advantages with Google My Business
In November 2018, Moz published an article on the 2018 local search ranking factors survey which made clear that Google My Business signals account for 25.12% of your ranking in the Snack Pack which is a 32.14% increase from 2017. Google reviews account for 15.44% and Google Posts account for 2.82% of your local Snack Pack ranking.[2] Not only this, Google My Business signals, Google reviews, and Google Posts account for around 19% of your organic Google rankings so it is vital to a strong local SEO campaign.
Ensure that you fill in your business information in full, collect positive Google reviews, make regular posts about your work and offers because Google will reward you by returning your listing in the Snack Pack and in organic search more often than businesses with poorly filled out listings. This increases the chances of people using your business when they are searching for a service or product that you offer locally.
BizWizUK partner with TRUSTist and not only do we use their services, we recommend them to our clients too! We’re delighted that they have written a guest blog for January. TRUSTist is the market leader in generating sales for “local” businesses, by optimising Google+ Local pages and generating a constant flow of high quality Ratings and Reviews on Google, resulting in greatly improved positions on Google Local Search results.
To find out how TRUSTist can help you with all of this and more, please feel free to book a free web-demonstration with me by following this link.
As we approach the end of the year and prepare for Christmas, we are also looking forward to the start of a brand new year. In this fast paced environment of social media marketing we can already predict many of the changes and trends that are likely to take place in 2019. With this in mind, it is important that you start to look at your 2019 social media strategy to ensure that you are ahead of the game. Some elements to consider are:
Keeping up with social media
Big changes coming to Facebook’s messaging platform
As of the 1st January 2019, Facebook Pages will need to be successfully approved for subscription messaging permissions if not, they won’t be able to send the free messaging type called ‘non-promotional subscription messaging’.
As above, the battle to be seen amongst the vast array of competitor content means that you have to make your own content stand out. Careful consideration should be given to the sort of content you’re posting and its relevance. Your content should be a rich mixture of video, live streaming and info graphics. Text heavy updates will simply not be enough when it comes to your social media strategy!
Taking advantage of new platform features such as Facebook ‘Watch Party’
It’s official! Facebook Watch Party has been officially launched! It’s a new feature for groups that allows admins to hold a live screening of pre-recorded videos that are publicly available on Facebook. Group members can watch and comment on the videos at the same time to create a shared viewing experience.
Changing demographics
When considering your marketing plan you should take into account who your target audience is. Think about the varying understanding of technology, contact preferences and tome of voice that might best appeal to each demographic. For example, graduates, teenage consumers and the ageing population means people of an older age that might not have been targeted previously should now be included in any marketing strategy.
Deciding which platform serves what purpose and how you can take full advantage
So, we now know that Facebook is looking more towards video as I have mentioned above, and LinkedIn has launched changes to Company pages so where does Twitter fit in? Twitter has announced a relatively small, but significant update, which now means that advertisers using the platform’s in-stream video ads will be able to reach a global audience with their ad content, as opposed to being region-restricted. Twitter has also announced a new update to its ‘Explore’ section which splits the latest news into sections, helping to improve relevant content discovery. Twitter is more associated to real-time content, so it might prove more beneficial to users who are looking to keep up with the latest news and events.
I hope my latest blog has given you some ideas for your 2019 social media strategy? Make sure you’re ahead of the game by using the above points to help inform your strategy or you can sign up to our monthly newsletter here.
Should you need any further assistance don’t hesitate to get in touch and my team and I can help draft a bespoke plan that will ensure your brand is on top in 2019.
It’s that time of the year again when we should have our Christmas marketing campaigns in place. This time of the year especially can be a great opportunity to surprise and engage your audience, whilst at the same time generating more reach and visibility for your brand.
Have you got your seasonal marketing plan in place? Here are my ideas:
End of Year Round-ups
End of the year round-ups are a great way to inform your audience of what’s been happening. Gather figures, such as insights that are relevant. For example, if you are in the financial services sector you might want to include how many people you’ve helped to get a mortgage, or how many first-time buyers you’ve helped to get on the property ladder in 2018. You could also consider interviewing contacts in your industry who can offer predictions into the new year ahead.
We have many clients who really like this idea and it helps but them above their competitors in terms of creativity! Think of how you can be informative or helpful with the content.
Leverage Video and Other Content
It’s not a secret that video marketing is a major trend to exploit. With 50% of consumers looking for a video of a product before visiting the online store* video is an extremely effective method of drawing the attention of your audience.
The content for your campaigns can include existing video or display ads, relevant posts that you’ve written for your blog, or campaigns that you are running on Twitter, Facebook or other channels. By putting these in front of a relevant audiences can significantly increase the value that your previous marketing investments deliver!
Get Behind a Local Charity
Another great way to create a seasonal social media campaign and give back to your community is to get behind a local charity that matters to your brand, your people and audience. Ask a member of staff, or your boss, to dress up as Santa and visit a local charity to donate Christmas presents to children or instead of sending Christmas cards donate the money to charity! There are some fantastic ideas here.
Create Social Media Only Offers
Make your audience more special at Christmas time and offer a social media only exclusive offer. This might be in the form of a discount, free delivery, free advice, a 3 for the price of 2 type offer, there’s lots of opportunities you could consider.
I don’t believe in making things complicated and your marketing campaigns don’t have to be either! Here’s some extra ideas to keep in mind over this Christmas and New Year period:
Design a special Christmas image which also resonates with your brand, change your social media profiles and header images to reflect your marketing campaign
Pin posts to the top of your profile on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn Company pages
Create campaign specific hashtags that you can track. This will help you measure the performance of any marketing campaigns
Don’t forget to include easy access in which your audience can share your campaign or special offer via your website
Track your campaign results so you can improve future campaigns
Use paid ads to increase your reach
I hope that you have enjoyed reading my social media marketing ideas for the Christmas season ahead, let the festivities begin!
If you’d like to chat about any of your future social media requirements, bespoke to your company, please contact me on 07752 539719 or 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.
LinkedIn is a great professional networking tool to communicate with existing and potential franchisees, connect to peers, monitor competitors, and find new talent for your franchise.
Many franchisors don’t realise the true power of LinkedIn and this is great news for those who do, as they can easily fill that void with a lesser amount of effort than on more crowded social channels. Many have started leveraging LinkedIn to different ends – from monitoring their online reputation to developing and nurturing a loyal community and attracting franchisees. Your franchise should be listening to your audience, responding and opening conversation, encouraging them to engage with your brand.
How are businesses using LinkedIn?
94% of B2B marketers use LinkedIn to distribute content *
80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn *
LinkedIn has the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate of all social media platforms at 2.74%, compared to Facebook at .77% and Twitter at .69% **
46% of social media traffic to B2B sites comes from LinkedIn *
79% of B2B marketers believe LinkedIn is an effective lead generation source*
LinkedIn can have a big impact on your capability to generate franchise leads and opportunities and convert prospective buyers into new owners. Here’s your snapshot of what you need to know:
Know Your Audience and Reach Out
Who are your prospective buyers on LinkedIn? The better you understand and can answer this question, the easier it will be to engage, connect and position your franchise. Search for people who fit your ideal franchisee or are based in areas where you’re recruiting. Reach out to them because even if they aren’t a good fit, they might know someone who is!
Competitors
Review your competitors’ LinkedIn company profiles, as well as a few personal profiles of employees. This will help you to better understand how they’re positioning themselves toward their (and your) target audience. Take notes on what their profile and company page tell you about them and the franchise. Can you do better, do prospective buyers really get what your franchise is all about?
Company Page
Post regular educational, informative and fun news about your franchise together with any team news and PR that your brand receives. Not only will this show the ‘human’ side of your brand but will increase the awareness of your brand, when people research their franchise opportunity. Examples of content to post could include: video, mentions in the media, any market expansion, new location openings (newly signed up franchisees), awards and recognition, franchisee testimonials or case studies about their investment, and charitable activities.
Showcase
Develop a showcase page that focuses on your franchise opportunity. Showcase Pages are extensions of your Company Page designed for highlighting a specific product or service. Create your Showcase Page for aspects of your franchise with its own content, to attract your target audience.
Share
Amplify your voice and encourage employees to share updates via their personal profiles, maximising your exposure and help keep your brand top of mind with employees’ friends, contacts and business connections: these types of connections are historically excellent at helping to make referrals and recommendations on your behalf.
Groups
Engage with any LinkedIn Groups relevant to your target audience. Share your content relevant to keep top of mind with those people who may be a potential franchisee in time.
Sponsored Updates
Use sponsored updates to cost-effectively maximise a post’s visibility; target people based on parameters such as location, work experience, current job title, age, skills and educational background.
Upgrade Your Membership
LinkedIn has different Premium account options for those who want to get more out of LinkedIn. If you have a free account and want to upgrade, you can compare account types described here.
LinkedIn is an excellent platform for supporting your franchise development efforts. If you’d like to chat about any LinkedIn training requirements, bespoke to your company either on a one to one or group basis, or ongoing management and support, please contact me on 07752 539719 or 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.
Events in 17 libraries throughout the UK were held on the 20th September, celebrating Start-up Day, in collaboration with Santander, and once again proved to be a huge success.
More than 1,000 people attended across all locations, welcoming entrepreneurs for fully funded talks, workshops and advice sessions. I was delighted to be invited to present a workshop on ‘How to Network on LinkedIn – Get Connected and Grow Your Business’, and here I have compiled my top tips from the day, so that you can continue your start-up journey.
LinkedIn Profile – get it complete and up to date!
Building connections starts with people seeing all that you have to offer and those with 100% complete profiles are 40 times more likely open to opportunities through LinkedIn.
You’re more experienced than you think!
Think broadly about all your experience, including summer jobs, internships, volunteer work, and any student organisations you were involved with. You never know what might catch someone’s eye.
Ask for recommendations
A recommendation from a client or customer is a great way to show that you are the expert in your field and that you’ve done a great job. I also recommend that you ask permission for these to be used in other areas of your marketing, such as website, brochures, email footers etc. – don’t just keep them on LinkedIn.
Use your inbox
Networking on LinkedIn doesn’t mean reaching out cold to strangers. Start building your LinkedIn network and connect to those people you know, like and trust, in the first instance. The trick is to then see who they know so you can ask your trusted connection for an introduction, and guess what, they’ll be much more likely to help if you already know them.
Default Messages -V- Customised Messages
It’s an absolute must that you tailor your LinkedIn request, let’s look at why…
“I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”
OR
“Hi XX, it was great to meet you at XX last week. It is good to see you on LinkedIn and thought we could stay in touch?”
What would you prefer to receive in your inbox? I’d certainly prefer the message where they have certainly taken their time to be interested – try it for yourself!
Join in the crowd
LinkedIn Groups can help you form new connections, start with any alumni groups, find other organisations and any associations that you belong to, or groups who are relevant to your industry sector/expertise.
Follow-up
Take the relationship off LinkedIn – offer to meet for a coffee or schedule a “virtual coffee” – the only way for connections to get to know, like and trust you.
Summary
Make sure your profile is 100% complete and updated, include your experience.
Ask for recommendations, they are important to show off your great work!
Connect to people you know, like and trust.
Always customise your connection request or messages.
Join in the crowd – look up those groups of interest.
Follow-up! Like any relationship it’s all about keeping in touch and following up.
If you’d like to chat about any LinkedIn training requirements, bespoke to your company either on a one to one or group basis, please contact me on 07752 539719 or 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.
Do you feel whatever you do on LinkedIn you just can’t get the search results you need?
Using the LinkedIn search filters is a great way to narrow your search and find exactly what and who you’re looking for. However, I will stress that if you upgrade Recruiter Lite or Sales Navigator premium accounts, you can also filter searches by years of experience, functions, seniority level, interests, company size, and when they joined a company, allowing you to perform even more powerful searches. Here’s an article from Mark Williams explaining Sales Navigator VS Recruiter Lite so worth a read.
Boost your use of LinkedIn as a sales-generation machine, here’s some tips to help get better results when searching for those key decision makers.
How to Run a Search
Running a search is easy, to run a search on LinkedIn you must:
Enter your keyword in the ‘search bar’ at the top of the page
Select an option from the drop-down of suggestions that appears as you type, or click the ‘search’ icon to run the search
If you’ve searched for a company, the Company Page will appear in the drop-down, if there is a page created. You’ll see the following tabs at the top of the search results page:
All
People
Jobs
Content
Companies
Groups
Schools
Select any of the tabs to view search results in that category.
How to run a Boolean Search
Boolean are a little complicated however, they allow us to combine keywords with operators or modifiers such as NOT, AND and OR to produce more appropriate results. You can run a Boolean search by combining keywords with operators like AND, NOT, and OR.
Here are some ways to use Boolean to construct your search:
Quoted searches
For an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks. For example, type “product manager”. You can also use quotation marks if you want to find someone with a multi-word title.
LinkedIn search only supports standard, straight quotation marks (“).
NOT searches
If you want to exclude a search term from your search results type the word NOT (capital letters) beforehand, which obviously limits your search results. For example, “operator NOT supervisor”.
OR searches
Type the word OR for results which include one or more items in a list which will help to. broaden your results. For example, “sales OR marketing OR advertising”.
AND searches
Type the word AND to see results which include all items in that list. For example, “accountant AND finance AND accounts”.
For a full breakdown of how to run a Boolean search head over to Brynne Tillman who explains further.
There’re no shortcuts when it comes to success other than patience and time and it all comes down to hard work, testing and measuring.
If you’d like to chat about any LinkedIn training requirements, bespoke to your company, contact me on 07752 539719 or 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.
Do you feel whatever you do on LinkedIn you just can’t get the search results you need?
Using the LinkedIn search filters is a great way to narrow your search and find exactly what and who you’re looking for. However, I will stress that if you upgrade Recruiter Lite or Sales Navigator premium accounts, you can also filter searches by years of experience, functions, seniority level, interests, company size, and when they joined a company, allowing you to perform even more powerful searches. Here’s an article from Mark Williams explaining Sales Navigator VS Recruiter Lite so worth a read.
Boost your use of LinkedIn to a sales-generation machine, here’s some tips to help get better results when finding thos key decision makers.
How to Run a Search
Running a search is easy, to run a search on LinkedIn you must:
Enter your keyword in the ‘search bar’ at the top of the page
Select an option from the drop-down of suggestions that appears as you type, or click the ‘search’ icon to run the search
If you’ve searched for a company, the Company Page will appear in the drop-down, if there is a page created. You’ll see the following tabs at the top of the search results page:
All
People
Jobs
Content
Companies
Groups
Schools
Select any of the tabs to view search results in that category.
How to run a Boolean Search
Boolean are a little complicated however, they allow us to combine keywords with operators or modifiers such as NOT, AND and OR to produce more appropriate results. You can run a Boolean search by combining keywords with operators like AND, NOT, and OR.
Here are some ways to use Boolean to construct your search:
Quoted searches
For an exact phrase, enclose the phrase in quotation marks. For example, type “product manager”. You can also use quotation marks if you want to find someone with a multi-word title.
LinkedIn search only supports standard, straight quotation marks (“).
NOT searches
If you want to exclude a search term from your search results type the word NOT (capital letters) beforehand, which obviously limits your search results. For example, “operator NOT supervisor”.
OR searches
Type the word OR for results which include one or more items in a list which will help to. broaden your results. For example, “sales OR marketing OR advertising”.
AND searches
Type the word AND to see results which include all items in that list. For example, “accountant AND finance AND accounts”.
For a full breakdown of how to run a Boolean search head over to Brynne Tillman who explains further.
There’re no shortcuts when it comes to success other than patience and time and it all comes down to hard work, testing and measuring.
If you’d like to chat about any LinkedIn training requirements, bespoke to your company, contact me on 07752 539719 or 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.
Getting an audience to engage with your social media content can be difficult, social media polls are often overlooked for helping to increase engagement and brand awareness. Social media polls can help you learn more about your audience, here’s a few tips to help you get the best from your polls:
Know when to Post
As with your other social media content, you’ll get the best engagement if you publish your polls at peak times. Here’s an article by CoSchedule* to help you decide on the best times.
Thought-provoking and Relevant
Ensure your subject is relevant to your audience, whether it’s about your products or services or another topic, you’ll need to make sure that your audience will want to take part, so avoid repeating the same questions or themes.
Don’t Bombard your Followers
If you go over the top and post too many polls it will become tedious and unproductive for your campaign therefore, once or twice a week should be plenty to increase engagement without putting your audience off.
Get Interacting
Your polls should act as an opportunity to interact with your audience and make sure you take the time to respond to any comments. It’s also important to inform your audience what you’re going to use the information for because if they feel that their opinion matters, then they might be happy to engage again for future polls.
Social media polls are easy and quick to set up. You’re not asking participants to take a few minutes to complete, all your followers must do is read and click – all in a few seconds!
Have you ever taken the time to ask what your audience wants or how they feel about your products or services? You can eliminate any guesswork with social media polls and by observing responses you can learn directly from them and better understand their needs.
In Summary
As with any marketing strategy you can always adjust your polls and create the content which is more in line with what your audience wants to read and contribute.
Using social media as part of your content strategy is a fabulous way to increase engagement and awareness of your brand. Furthermore, you’ll be able to find out what your audience wants, thinks, and how they feel, while getting your brand in front of more followers.
If you think we can help support your social media strategy or you would like to talk to us because you don’t use social media, please contact us or call 0161 826 7181 or email info@bizwizuk.co.uk.
and more..
